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The Shadow Dossier — The Fifth Man Nobody Named for Decades · The Shadow Dossier

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  the shadow dossier act i the ring of five by
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  the 1950s the british public knew the outline
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  of a scandal even if the details took decades
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  to fill in four cambridge educated men recruited
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  as idealistic young communists in the 1930s had
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  spent their careers burrowing into the heart
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  of british intelligence and diplomacy while secretly
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  serving Moscow. Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean
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  fled to the Soviet Union in 1951. Kim Philby,
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  the most senior of them, was unmasked and defected
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  in 1963. Anthony Blunt, an art historian with
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  a royal appointment, confessed privately in 1964
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  and was only named publicly in 1979. For years,
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  intelligence officers and journalists spoke of
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  a fifth man, someone who had never been identified,
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  protected by a confession that Britain's government
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  kept secret for reasons it never fully explained.
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  Act 2. The man at Bletchley Park. That fifth
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  man was John Cairncross. recruited at Cambridge
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  in the mid -1930s during the same wave of ideological
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  recruitment that had drawn in Philby and the
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  others, though Cairncross moved in different
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  circles and was never part of the same social
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  set. He built a career inside the British Civil
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  Service. The Treasury, the Foreign Office, a
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  stint at MI6. and at the height of the Second
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  World War, a posting to Bletchley Park, the code
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  -breaking center that had broken Germany's enigma
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  ciphers. At Bletchley, Cairncross had access
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  to Ultra, the intelligence drawn from decrypted
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  German communications, among the most closely
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  guarded secrets of the entire war. He passed
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  material to his Soviet handlers regularly. including
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  intelligence that historians credit with helping
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  warn the Soviet high command ahead of the Battle
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  of Korsk in the summer of 1943, one of the largest
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  tank battles in history and a decisive turning
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  point on the Eastern Front. It's worth pausing
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  on what this meant in practice. Britain and the
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  Soviet Union were allies against Germany at the
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  time. Karen Cross would later argue that he had
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  simply been sharing intelligence between two
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  nations fighting the same enemy at a moment when
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  Britain's own government was not always forthcoming
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  with its ally. Whether that argument excuses
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  passing ultra -material outside official channels
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  is a question historians still debate. Cairncross'
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  exposure came slowly and quietly. When Burgess
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  and McLean fled in 1951, a notebook belonging
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  to Burgess was found to contain notes in Cairncross'
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  handwriting and in my five -question him that
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  year. He denied deliberate espionage, resigned
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  from the civil service under a cloud, and moved
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  abroad. working for years as an academic and
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  translator in the United States and later in
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  Italy and France. In 1964, with new evidence
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  and testimony from another defector pointing
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  more directly at him, MI5 confronted Cairncross
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  again. This time he confessed in exchange for
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  a promise of immunity from prosecution and a
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  guarantee that his confession would stay secret.
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  The British government kept that promise for
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  over two decades. Cairncross lived out much of
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  the rest of his life abroad, largely out of public
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  view, his role known only to a small circle of
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  intelligence officials. The truth emerged gradually
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  through the 1980s and into 1990. As journalists
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  and historians, aided by Soviet defector testimony,
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  pieced together the identity MI5 had kept quiet.
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  By the time Karen Cross was named publicly as
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  the fifth man, he was in his late 70s, living
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  in France. He gave interviews defending his wartime
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  actions specifically, while distancing himself
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  from any activity after the war ended. He died
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  in October 1995. At his home near Cambridge,
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  England, having outlived every other member of
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  the ring he had joined six decades earlier. Of
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  the five, Cairncross remains the hardest to place
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  neatly into the story. He never fled to Moscow
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  like Burgess and McLean, never lived a double
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  life inside British intelligence itself like
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  Philby, and never held the social prominence
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  of Blunt. He simply worked for years in rooms
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  where secrets passed through and quietly decided
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  which of them belonged to more than one government.
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  This concludes declassified file number 0050
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  of the Shadow Dossier, the fifth man nobody named
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  for decades. What dangerous secrets await in
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  our next file? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
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  RSS .com, and YouTube so you never miss an official
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  declassification. This is the Shadow Dossier.
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  Thank you for listening.